A Little Life Less Ordinary
Disclaimer: House, M.D. does not belong to me. Please don't sue; all I have is a packet of spearmint chewing gum.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: House/Cuddy
Summary: "You're pregnant," he stated to the inside of her well stocked refrigerator, as if it were an unequivocal truth. It figured that House would work it out before her. Unashamedly House/Cuddy with everyone else thrown into the mix . . .
Author's Note: Just for clarification, this is set towards the end of season three, but I've taken a few liberties with the storyline as Foreman and Cameron have not resigned and Chase was not fired.
Thank you to: Critical Blues, glicine, insanehouseaddict, Armony Wilihiem, Wolf Maid, LordXwee, Gertrude2034, HuddyTheUltimate, Alias424, TVHollywoodDiva, Mishelle20 and Senator Elizabeth Organa for reviewing. You guys make be unbelievably happy.
Part Five
In which second tries prove more fruitful . . .
.: Chapter Fourteen :.
Cameron was smiling at her. Again.
It was like the woman was possessed – and had never been in the presence of a pregnant female before.
She gritted her teeth and attempted to smile back. She probably looked constipated, but it was the best she could muster, "Something I can help you with Dr. Cameron?"
They were standing around in the clinic. Patients were being examined around them, doctors and nurses running to and from exam rooms; nothing out of the ordinary – but why did it feel like the twilight zone?
"Nothing," Cameron said – smile widening to epic proportions.
Cuddy nodded. The girl obviously had some issues.
"How are you?"
Normally seen as an inconspicuous and harmless question – it was anything but when it left the lips of one Allison Cameron.
"I'm fine," Cuddy replied.
"Good. That's good."
"Yes," Cuddy said slowly, at Cameron's obvious nervousness, "Very good."
The woman was still staring at her. It was a look that screamed, 'I have something to ask you, but I damn well know it's none of my business.'
"Anything else I can help you with Dr. Cameron?" Cuddy thought she'd lend her a helping hand in spitting out whatever it was that she was desperate to ask – though she was fairly sure she knew just what exactly was on her mind. The entire staff of the hospital were just dying to know too.
But it appeared, asking the question about the paternity of her baby was something the younger woman had yet to work up the courage to ask as her cheeks blushed pink and she shook her head in the negative, "No, nothing. I have a patient in exam three I should really be getting back to."
Cuddy made no reply as Cameron hurried past her.
Oh well, Cuddy mused, she would most likely be having another encounter just like this one before the day was out. Human nature, after all, was fairly predictable. She thought fairly of course to allow for those few and far between anomalies that always seemed to pop up like some blip on the radar. Only one anomaly came to mind, however, and it went by the name Gregory House.
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOX
Sat back in his chair, journal open, Foreman was enjoying the rare silence and solitude of the conference room. Of course, he should have known that the prospect of just a few more minutes of peace was too good to be true.
"Where's Chase and Cameron?"
Foreman didn't look up at House to answer the question, "Cameron's in the clinic, Chase is in NICU."
"Heroin girl hasn't had the baby yet, what's Chase doing in NICU?"
Foreman rolled his eyes, "Heroin girl doesn't take heroin."
House ignored him as he pushed open the connecting glass door to his own office and walked through.
Foreman shut his journal with a heavy sigh, and reluctantly followed his superior into the next room.
"What are you doing?" Foreman asked as he watched House abandon his cane, and painfully stoop over to ransack his bookshelf behind his desk.
House didn't answer, and instead asked, "When's she leaving?"
"Who?" Foreman asked bewildered and irritated.
"Heroin girl, duh?" House replied flippantly, looking back at his fellow briefly over his shoulder before continuing his search for goodness knew what.
"This afternoon."
"Damn it!"
His eyebrows furrowed some more as he asked, "Why? Is there something else wrong with her?"
It appeared House was no longer interested – as brief a period of interest it had been – but anyway, he was now looking skyward, lines of frantic thinking marring his forehead.
And then there it was - that slow smile that had spread across his face numerous times before with countless life changing epiphanies.
He headed straight for the door, but not before collecting his discarded cane and shouting a retort to Foreman's question, "Yeah," he said, "She's on heroin."
With that the glass door shut behind him, leaving Foreman to roll his eyes again and ask whoever was listening what exactly he had done (apart from stealing a few cars) to have deserved this.
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOX
"I want it back."
Wilson dropped the pen in his hand to look up at the man who had just strode into his office, door wide open, staring down at him with all the theatrics of a pantomime villain or hero – he wasn't entirely sure which. Although if House was cast as the hero, that would make him the villain by default. Perhaps it was just best to cast House as himself.
"Want what back?"
"My book."
"Which book?" Wilson asked the obvious – entirely clueless.
What followed was quite a sight and one which Wilson was unlikely to forget for a long time indeed.
House appeared to struggle with the words that next left his mouth:
"My recipe book."
"Your what?" Wilson nearly choked on his own saliva.
"Oh you know what I'm talking about," House snapped, his patience waning, "Just give it back."
"Why?"
"I need it."
"Why?" A smirk was becoming increasingly evident upon Wilson's face. He was enjoying this.
"I know you took it Wilson."
"I honestly don't know what you're talking about. Frankly, I'm surprised you even bought yourself a cookbook."
"My mother bought it for . . . look would you just give it back. I need it."
"Why?"
House groaned, "I need it to diagnose my patient."
As ridiculous as House's answer sounded, Wilson batted neither eyelid as he asked incredulous, "Heroin girl?"
House nodded, "That's the one."
"Exactly what kind of recipe book is it?" Wilson asked, disgusted.
"Never mind," House gave up.
That in itself was so odd, that as Wilson watched to turn him leave, he decided to take pity on his friend and called out after him.
House stopped and watched as Wilson fished out a moderately sized hardback book and handed it over to him.
"You keep this here?" House asked, eyebrows raised, "If I was going to steal something, I'd at least take it home."
Wilson snorted, "You're the one who had it in his bookshelf full of books on infectious diseases and parasitic worms."
House shrugged his shoulders to admit as much.
"So why do you need it?"
But House just shot him a smile, and limped out his office.
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOX
It appeared the week long (or however the hell long it had been) avoidance was now well and truly over. The doors to her office sprung open, and lo and behold who should be stood there, but Dr. Gregory House himself.
She opened her mouth and stared at him. She didn't bother to ponder the ridiculous expression she was now sporting, but rather found her surprise at finding him standing in her office turn into a surprise of an altogether different sort.
He looked better.
He was standing a little straighter. The grimace of pain he had been desperately trying to hide behind his perpetual mask of glibness and indifference could no longer be detected even under intense scrutiny. But it wasn't just his leg that appeared better. His shirt was ironed. His hair was just the right side of tidy yet dishevelled all at the same time - making him all the more devastating. He was beaming at her – and she was instantly thrown back two decades ago to her former overeager student self and when she had first met the man stood in front of her. He looked so startlingly alike the young, handsome version of himself she had forever imprinted in her mind. But time inevitably changed people – infarctions and incriminations changed them both. Unexpected and uninvited pangs of sadness clawed at her heart at the realisation halting the smile that would have otherwise spread across her face in response to House's own grin.
"Finally decided to grow up and stop ignoring me then?"
House's smile disappeared. Half of her missed it; the other half blew a silent breath of relief. Normality is what they needed. She didn't understand what the past week had been about or what exactly it was that she was supposed to have done – if she had done anything at all and if it was in fact just some inner turmoil House himself had to work through alone. She wasn't self-absorbed enough to think that maybe it had had absolutely nothing to do with her, but that didn't mean she wasn't curious enough to ask;
"Care to explain just exactly why you were ignoring me?"
"The girls were ignoring me, so I decided to ignore them," House replied, his line of sight on the high neck line of her top, and Cuddy's decidedly under-exposed cleavage.
"Well, if it's just done buttons on my shirt that sends you to clinic and actually gets you to do your work-"
"Don't even think about," House interrupted, taking a few steps forward into her office, "You can't starve the girls from sunlight, they need their fair share of vitamin D. Can you imagine what they'd look like if they got rickets?" He followed that question with a visible shudder of disgust.
She couldn't help it as a laugh escaped her lips.
She had missed this. She was glad he had sorted out whatever it was that he needed to, because the ugly truth be told, she had missed him. She had worried about him endlessly this past week but it had all stemmed from the simple fact that she had truly missed him.
"What's happening with your patient?" she asked, steering the conversation to safer ground.
"Going home tomorrow – but you would know that already right, since you would have given it the go ahead?"
Cuddy silently cursed the man's intelligence.
He sat down in the arm chair in the corner. It was a fair distance from her seat behind the table, but as his blue eyes pinned her to the spot, the room felt several metres smaller.
Cuddy shifted in her chair. "Of course, I already know that, I'm just checking you do."
House sent her a slow smile that told her all she needed to know as to whether he had fallen for a single word of her retort. The answer, unsurprisingly, was no. She felt her skin prickle with uncomfortable heat – it was either the embarrassment or his penetrating gaze that did it. Logic would have given her the answer straight away, but irrationality always seemed to prevail in these situations and she quite stupidly pegged it down to the former.
"Is there anything in particular that you came here to do, apart from trying to sneak a glance at my rack?"
House's lips twitched, but the smile didn't grow any larger, "Yes."
Cuddy wasn't surprised in the least at his response. House always had reasons for his antics – bizarre and unpredictable as they usually were, but she could always count on him and his spontaneity.
"And what is it exactly that you want House?"
A silence followed that seemed to extend several minutes too long as he stared at her. The smile had all but left his face, his expression tightly closed off and entirely too serious.
"I want you."
The delivery of the line was perfect. Constructed such that it would provoke the maximum reaction possible, and the results were oh so glorious.
Eyes wide, mouth open – the colour drained from her face so that all that stood out were her invitingly bright red lips and disbelieving beautiful blue eyes. He half wished he could capture the sight in indelible coloured ink, honing in on those precious flecks of dark blue in her irises and the blush that seemed to blossom over her cheeks. It was, therefore, with great regret that he let the rest of his sentence escape his lips.
"To have dinner with me on Friday night," he finished. His own eyes sparkling with mischief to quite masterfully conceal his own anxiety and the barely recognisable fragility of his hope.
Colour shortly suffused back into her skin to even the blush that stained her cheeks as she comprehended the words. She shifted noticeably in her seat and cleared her throat;
"Your-" she stopped, cleared her throat again, regaining what she had lost in both composure and confidence, "Your pay cheque's in the mail. You'll get it Thursday, so make yourself, or rather; order in yourself a large meal for one. I'm busy Friday night."
House smirked as he watched her attempt to return to the paperwork she had discarded on his arrival.
"Ok fine," he said standing up.
Cuddy mistakenly assumed this to mean he had given in and was about to leave, and had therefore allowed herself to sneak a glance back up at him.
She, of course, really shouldn't have done so.
He was now standing right in front of her desk. With two very obvious hands placed on the wooden surface, his cane placed strategically so that it hung there effortlessly, he leaned over. His eyesight was now level with her own – only a few precious inches away.
"How about Saturday night?"
Cuddy couldn't think. Come to think of it; she couldn't really breathe very well either.
"Or we could always try Sunday."
He was still talking, but Cuddy barely noticed; for all that seemed to be pounding through her head like a jackhammer was that he was certainly not drunk, and that more importantly, he was unwaveringly determined to get her to say yes.
Words lingered fruitlessly on the tip of her tongue, but House saved her the trouble. The word 'saved', needless to say, used as loosely as the intricacies of linguistics allowed.
"Sunday night it is."
With that inarguable statement, announcing the end of this abrupt and unexpected conversation, House turned and left. Limping away, with a small smile etched on to his face – Cuddy saw nothing but the back of his grey jacket as he disappeared from view.
And all she could ask herself as she continued to sit in a daze was exactly this:
"What the hell had just happened?"
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOX
A/N 2: Please review. Feedback is craved and cherished.
SmilinStar
xxx